


the hurricane and the eye

by Mythopoeia



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [351]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: And Estrela who has Neither, Angst, Brothers, Conversations, Cousins, Fencing but Metaphorically, Fingon is Very Stressed, Gen, Gold Rush AU, Guilt, Literal Sleeping Together, M&M are Very Cute, Misery, Pain, Physical Therapy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, The Geometry of Carrots, The Great Lake Rescue of 1852, This has been a loooong time coming, Watching Someone Sleep, a star sticker for anyone who catches the reference, did u know every word in the entire AU can fit in a coke can, good luck to us all, i wrote ch3 and ch4 on my birthday uh, lots of pain, more tags to be added later, of a sort, we all celebrate in our own ways, we in the home stretch of healing arc now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29529828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythopoeia/pseuds/Mythopoeia
Summary: Storms happened anywhere.
Relationships: Arien & Maedhros | Maitimo, Fingon | Findekáno & Maedhros | Maitimo, Maedhros | Maitimo & Maglor | Makalaurë
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [351]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 11
Kudos: 23





	1. The Eye

By the time the hallway bustle quieted and Estrela had composed herself enough to venture into the sickroom, she found Russandol asleep. Both of them asleep, in fact: Maglor curled on his side atop the coverlet, face turned towards his brother, and Russandol buried beneath the blankets, his hair dried bright and tangled upon the pillow. He lay with his left hand close by Maglor’s face, his thin fingers crooked in Maglor’s long hair, and he did not stir at the sound of her entry. 

Fingon, who sat broodingly in his usual chair, bent over a battered notebook he turned fretfully over and over again in his hands, was the one who looked up when she opened the door. But he did not motion her to leave; instead he only nodded once, and dropped his gaze again, more subdued than she had ever seen him before. 

“He has been asleep for hours,” Fingon whispered, shortly, to both the book in his hand and to her. “The fever comes and goes, but—it shall be that way for some days, I expect. He is out of danger, for the moment.”

Mouth dry, eye damp, Estrela swallowed. 

“I brought you—I have some tea,” she said, passing him the mug with numb fingers. His dark brow furrowed, as he accepted it, putting the book aside upon the side table. He did not drink. 

“Wachiwi told me how you liked it,” she whispered. 

“Did she?”

“Yes. We have no sugar, after Christmas, but we put some honey in instead, when Caranthir wasn’t looking.”

That surprised a small smile from Fingon, lightening his tired face. He took a sip, then lowered the mug again to his knees. 

Estrela’s eyes kept returning, without her will, to the shape of Russandol, asleep.

“You may take a better look yourself, Estrela,” Fingon said softly, more of his customary kindness gentling his voice this time. “If it will ease your fears.”

She did not move closer to the sickbed. 

“I am sorry,” she replied instead, swallowing hard as she attempted to maintain composure, “that I was of no help, earlier. I—I—the shock took me very badly, and I do not know—I was never so useless in crisis, before. I—forgive me.”

“There is nothing to forgive. And I had assistance enough, and more than enough, thanks to Caranthir and Amras. A benefit, you see, that comes from having so very many brothers.”

He did not sound grateful. 

“And how is—Maglor?” Estrela asked, attempting to be charitable. Fingon’s fingers fidgeted against the cup and he gave her a brittle smile.

“Oh, he’ll be right as rain, no doubt. Nothing wrong with _his_ lungs. He used to be a famous singer, back in the East, did Maedhros ever tell you? Chest like a bellows.”

“Did Maedhros—was he ever a singer, too?”

To ask the question felt horribly brazen, and made her feel a little twisted inside in the way any thought of his life before always made her feel. Fingon’s blue eyes widened slightly, surprised, and then his smile relaxed a little and he shook his head. 

“No, no, he was not so musically inclined. And Maedhros was never particularly interested in pursuing the stage, anyway. He attracted enough attention as it was, you know, gadding about.” He paused. “He did love to dance.”

The smile was gone, quick as it had come. 

“Do you need anything else?” Estrela asked, in desperate effort not to think of her Russandol, dancing. “Food? More water?”

“No, thank you. I have eaten. I’ll fetch something from the kitchen myself, when they wake.”

“I will have bowls set out for you on the hearth,” she replied, and at last she did step closer to the bed—only one step, only just enough to see Russandol’s face. He looked as peaceful as she had ever seen him, which was a relief; he and Maglor lay so close, face to face, that they put her in mind of the way she sometimes found Frog and Sticks, when they fell asleep whispering secrets together. The image was a ghost of some sort of innocence she was not part of; something from a childhood she had not shared, in a past she did not know. Estrela had no brothers or sisters. There was nothing in her experience to help her understand what Maglor was to Maedhros—to even Russandol, back in the slave camp, determined to burn Bauglir’s works to the ground all for the love of his brothers. For all his brothers, so dissimilar to Estrela, and fragile, nervous Maglor perhaps most of all. 

Seeing the two of them asleep like this, however, side by side, it was much easier to see the family likeness. They shared the same brilliant, vivid, consumptive beauty—the pale, fine features, the high, rare flush of fever bright as rouge against their fair skin. The shape of their brows was the same, as was the peak in their hair. Maglor’s features were darker, his mouth was softer, his eyes a little more deep-set. He did not have his brother’s freckles, or the striking color of his eyes. But in repose, like this—

She and Gwindor would die to protect their Russandol. Was it so great a marvel, then, that Maedhros would be willing to die to save his Maglor? 

The memory of the morning, resurfaced, made her tremble. She would normally have been awake when the crisis occurred, as she was not a deep sleeper, but Frog had woken uncommonly early, and she had been tired from staying awake late the night before. She vaguely remembered how grateful she had felt, when Aredhel had intervened to coax Frog away to breakfast, and she remembered the utter quiet of the dawn-pale room, as she fell asleep again. 

The next thing she remembered was waking to sounds of urgent commotion in the hallway. 

It was Wachiwi who told her that Finrod had pulled two bodies from the lake. 

_Maglor_ , she said. And then, her normally bold gaze softened by sympathy: _Maedhros_. 

It had not made sense. Even when Estrela felt herself burst into tears, even when Wachiwi hugged her and reassured her and promised her Fingon had them both well in hand—

Maedhros could have drowned, while she lay asleep, and she would not have known. She had had no premonition, no warning, nothing. And drowning happens so quickly—Once a man is in deep water, the dying is silent and easy. Gone, forever, in the blink of an eye—in the flash of a single hand above the surface and then: nothing. 

Estrela had seen men lost to water before, from her growing, sunlit years aboard her father’s ships. 

Not often, of course. But storms did happen, at sea. 

Storms happened anywhere. 

As Estrela left the room, she heard a stirring in the blankets behind her; she heard a well-loved voice, hoarse and confused, murmur: 

“ _Cano_?”

She closed the door quietly behind her, and headed for the kitchen.


	2. The Interlude

Fingon had proven his medical skill many times over, by now, but as the next few days slipped by he proved himself yet again, as Maglor and Maedhros both recovered from what Mithrim was now calling—with varying degrees of distress and derision—the Lake Incident. Estrela herself did not get any opportunity to visit the sickroom again, except in hasty, simple errands: delivering food and drink, or collecting linens, or other such sundries. Maglor was much recovered by the second day, and had departed to sleep nights in his own room at Fingon’s urging—or, more precisely, at Maedhros’ coaxing. Maedhros’ fever ran much longer than Maglor’s, but as far as Estrela knew he remained largely lucid, and though Maglor visited him for hours each day he had allowed himself to be persuaded to give Maedhros room to rest and recuperate. 

“Maitimo observed Amras was anxious, and he thought it best I stay with him, to reassure him,” Maglor explained Estrela the third morning, when she encountered him by the coffee pot in the kitchen. He sipped at his black coffee as though it were a martyrdom, the steam wreathing his pale face. The air of desperate madness had left him, since his breaking nearly killed his dearest brother, and the Maglor left behind was a new kind of creature to Estrela: at once younger and more pensively conversational, less wrapped in his own black thoughts. 

“He was right, of course,” Maglor mused to her then—or to the coffee pot, which seemed just as likely. “Maitimo is always right.”

The curious thing was he had not returned to sleep in the bedchamber he had previously shared with all his younger brothers, but instead had made a new bed in the study, where Amras now joined him. Or perhaps this retreat was not so curious: Estrela had yet to see Celegorm and Maglor in the same room together, since Maglor’s near-drowning. 

The day after her encounter with Maglor in the kitchen, Estrela at last found Russandol alone in his room, not even Fingon there to mind him. He was awake and sitting up in the bed, fully alert and lucid, his face turned toward the window. It was only mid-afternoon, nearly teatime in civilized places where there was a teatime, and the light beyond the pane was bright despite the winter clouds. It slipped in like grey organza through the window, and settled upon Russandol’s copper hair like golden thread. 

Someone had washed his hair, since she last visited. It fell soft and dry and curling across his forehead, long enough to partially obscure his brow. He did not look afraid, when he turned to look at her, but he regarded her a little too long, as though having to place her—or himself. 

“Ah, Estrela,” he murmured at last, “you bring the sunlight with you.”

“You sound fevered, still,” she replied lightly, hoping he could not see her blush. Russandol turned back to the little window, nodding towards it. 

“Not at all. The clouds have been thick all morning, and just now, the sun broke through. Blue as anything. See for yourself.”

She crossed to the window. It provided very little view: scrubby winter grass, the rise of the hill, the blank expanse of the sky. Here and there were signs of Curufin’s explosives, in how the earth was torn. A few enormous black crows still poked about the hillside. It was as Russandol had described, however: there was a narrow break in the cloud layer, clean and robin-egg blue, and a thin shaft of sunlight cut through to fall upon the dull grass. 

“You have been watching the sky?” She asked, setting her hands upon the cold windowsill. Behind her, she heard movement that might have been a shrug. 

“Little else to watch, here.”

“Have you not been out walking again yet? I thought Doctor Fingon was encouraging you to move about more, at least before . . .”

She trailed off, awkwardly. Russandol smiled a thin, not-quite pleasant smile. 

“ _Doctor_ Fingon,” he said, wryly, “has insisted I stay abed, since I went for my dash down to the lake. It seems I overexerted myself.”

“Do you feel you overexerted yourself?” 

A crow ducked quick as a snakestrike, and lifted its glossy head happily, something caught in its sharp beak. Estrela left the window and went to sit in one of the two bedside chairs, smoothing her skirts from very old habit that had, lately, been coming back to her. Russandol watched her as she had watched that crow: as a curiosity, for lack of anything more interesting to do. 

He did not answer her question, except to give a little shrug again beneath his loose muslin shirt.

“The children have been asking after you,” she told him, to fill his silence. “Especially Sticks. I thought perhaps later before supper, if you are willing, I might bring them for a short visit. Fingon has been keeping everyone out, mostly. We have all wanted to give you time to rest, of course, but if you do not mind—“

“Of course they may visit,” Russandol said, a little impatiently. The sharpness in his voice startled her to silence, and he returned to picking at whatever lay upon his blanketed lap, with his awkward, fumbling, left-handed fingers. 

It took her a moment to realize he was attempting to button another shirt, this one so near the color of the one he wore she had not previously realized it was a separate garment. There were some ugly stains upon it, only half-faded, that could have been—

“It’s one of the ones I ruined,” Russandol said, having somehow caught the question in her mind without even looking up from his task. “Bled all over it, apparently, in those early days. Glad I was not awake for _that_! Fingon brought it to me; they were going to use it for bandages but he thought this might be better.”

“And what is this?” 

“Practice,” he answered, with a broad, soft inflection to his voice that instantly reminded her of how Fingon spoke. After a pause, he added brightly: “I confess it is astonishing, to find myself so confounded by something as simple as buttoning a shirt, or turning pages in a book, or using a fork. Fingon has given me a regular Grecian armada of exercises to perform, while I sit abed. Exercises in humility, all of them.”

“I think you are doing a fine job of it,” Estrela tried to encourage him, uncomfortable with the way his thoughts were bending. He blinked at her, and then back down at the half-buttoned shirt. 

“I forgive you your kindness,” he said, very dry, “since you never did see me working buttons before I was left sinister.”

“I am certain you were a prodigy,” she replied, mirroring his expression of voice, and he blinked again at that, and made the rare, soft huff of sound she had used to cherish so closely, in the slave-quarters: a small, stifled laugh. 

“Well,” he said, not quite so dry as before, “maybe I was. But enough feeling sorry for myself; what is it you came for, Estrela? For surely you did not come visit just to lend a weary ear to all my whinging!”

“On the contrary.” She folded her hands neatly upon her lap. “I came to help keep you company, and provide a little conversation, if you wanted it. Whinge all you like.”

“I shan’t,” he said, darkly. “Fingon might hear.”

“Would it be so terrible, for Fingon to hear you are unhappy?”

Russandol frowned, and said nothing. 

“Russandol,” she said, very gently. His fingers fumbled at another metal button. “He is trying his hardest, you know. He is doing his best.”

“Oh! I know _that_. How else would he have worked out such a damn long list of fidgets for me to perform?” He stopped, almost mid-word, and looked ashamed. 

“—Never mind that,” he amended. “That is Fingon, you see, all the goodness in him. He never could let anything alone.”

“I admire him.”

“So do I. It isn’t—his fault.”

Russandol swallowed, and looked up at her, with a flash of those glass-grey eyes.

“He told me I must work at all these exercises diligently, else I shan’t be able to work a gun again.”

Estrela met his gaze, and for once, she did not quaver. 

Instead, she asked softly: “And that is what you want? To work a gun again?”

She could have not begun to guess, what his crooked, quirking smile meant at that. 

“Celegorm tried to give me one of his throwing blades,” Russandol said at last, looking down at his hand again. He was using his crippled forearm to hold the shirt steady, while he worked at the buttons; Estrela realized, looking at it, that she could not recall him using the maimed limb before, instead keeping it always immobile and close to his body. He seemed to interpret her silence as confusion, for he glanced up again and elaborated. 

“Little metal discs, like stars. Curufin’s a marvel at them. Only, Fingon says I shouldn’t be allowed knives yet, so.”

He hesitated, voice faltering. 

“That is—forgive me. You saw them before.”

She had indeed; she had seen Gwindor draw one out of his pocket, that terrifying Christmas night. Russandol had not been himself, then—or, at least, she did not like to think that he had. 

Estrela did not wish to remind him now of that dark moment, so she merely shook her head and smiled as best she could with her twisted mouth. 

“Never mind. Maybe it _is_ wiser to leave knives aside for now,” she offered, “until you are steadier.”

Russandol hummed something that meant neither agreement or disagreement, as far as she could interpret, and slipped another button loose with some difficulty. 

“Is it more difficult to do them up or undo them?” She asked, as lightly as she could. He did not look up. 

“Oh, the devil is the doing. Would you like to give it a try?”

He extended the garment to her and she put out her hands to take it, laying it out smoothly over her knees. She began to attempt to refasten the button he had just undone, then caught herself. 

“It is only fair,” she remarked, as she switched to her left hand. He watched her poor attempt wordlessly, his expression unreadable. 

“When I first began walking again,” she said, attempting to hold the fabric still by splaying out her ring and little fingers, pinching at the button with pointer and thumb, “it took a long while to get used to only seeing out one eye. Depth is all wrong. Sometimes I would reach for things and they wouldn’t be there. Bruised my shoulder against a dozen doorways.”

He was quiet a long while. Then he asked, just as quietly: “How long did it take?”

“A couple of months, I think,” she answered. The button slipped loose of her efforts again and she hunched closer to it, squinting. “But I scarcely notice it, now.”

Above her, he had turned to look out the window again. Glancing up, she saw him close one eye, regarding the grey hillside a moment in silence, and then open it again. He shuddered. 

“I did jest earlier, when I called you a prodigy,” Estrela said, softly. “But I do mean it. You were correct, this is—devilishly difficult.”

“I can only imagine what my writing shall look like,” he replied, with an abrupt return to the brittle brightness he had displayed when she first entered the room. She handed the shirt back to him, shaking her head. 

“No worse than mine, likely. I’d not held a pen for years, before coming here. It is—peculiar, the things one loses. The things that come back.”

It was her turn to falter to silence, now. 

“I am sorry,” she began again, after a pause. “I did not mean to drag you into such doleful conversation. I meant only to give you company, in case you were—In case you wanted to have someone to talk to. Here, let us speak of better things: I can tell you how I caught Frog among the beds in the hall yesterday, winding a poor fellow’s head in bandages. I have been helping your cousin Fingon tend the injured, and perhaps should not have let Frog observe us at work. He is proving himself a true rascal, these days.”

“Good for him,” said Russandol, with a faint little smile. “And—yes, if you do not mind. I should like to hear how everyone is—is getting on.”

She told him of her meeting with Maglor in the kitchen, and how she had seen Amras talking with Sticks at breakfast, and how she and Wachiwi had contrived to purloin some honey for Fingon’s tea the last few days without Caranthir realizing the theft. He smiled, and asked brief questions, and seemed fully engaged, but he did not return to the task of buttoning. After a quarter hour she could see he was weary, and paused midway through describing the layout of Caranthir’s vegetable garden to help him lie back more comfortably upon the pillows. 

His skin was no longer fever-hot, beneath her fingers. She tried not to notice, how he fixed upon her wide-eyed, and how he did not breathe, until she stepped back, as gently as she could. 

“Thank you,” he murmured, after a moment. “Pray do not—do not go. Say more about the—the geometry of carrots.”

“I shall stay until Fingon returns,” she promised, retreating to the bench. It felt safer, in the moment, to sit farther back from the bed. He lay with his eyes closed, but his face was turned towards her, his breathing still a little unsteady. 

By the time she had finished explaining the intricacies of Caranthir’s garden plot, his breathing had deepened into sleep, and his thin hand had relaxed upon the covers, fingers curled softly towards his palm. 

She sat leaned back against the corner of the wall, watching him. The quiet covered her like a coverlet; the slant of the light crept slowly down the stones. The steady, reassuring sound of Russandol’s breathing was so comforting, she did not even notice as she slipped after him into sleep herself.


	3. The Hurricane

Voices, in the dark.

No.

Voices, outside the dark, because she was the one in the dark. Left to listen, helpless, to the awful sounds of Russandol and his tormentor speaking together. It had been Gothmog who had jeered at him, and hurt him, then. Who had forced him to crawl. Why, then, did the voice sound like Bauglir, now?

_Maitimo, I had thought to find you sleeping._

_Do I disappoint you?_

_No._

Her hands were—not bound. She was asleep sitting up against something hard, but—it was not the flour sacks from Gothmog’s storeroom.

The voice was not Bauglir’s.

“It’s all right,” Russandol was saying, quietly. “She’s asleep; let her be, Fingon.”

“Oh, well,” Fingon answered, uncomfortably: “I had wanted to speak to you alone, Maedhros.”

“If you keep your voice down, then you shall. Is something the matter? With my brothers?”

“No,” Fingon replied, a little strained. “No, your brothers are all very well.”

His voice, which had been near to start with, moved away. The bedside chair creaked, as he sat. In the silence that followed, Estrela drifted, still only half-awake. She was nearly asleep again, when Russandol’s bright-lilting voice—his _clever_ voice, she had called it in their slave days—cut into her drowsy haze once more.

“Fingon, do not look at me so. If you have something you must say, then for God’s sake, spill it out, but do not sit there—looking. Is it something I have done? Is it something wrong with—with me?”

That last, a little shakily. 

Estrela opened her eyes.

She still sat in her corner upon Celegorm’s bench, where she had fallen asleep what must have been hours before. It had been mid-afternoon, then, the room filled with hazy grey light, warm as only an invalid’s room can be warm, in winter. It was dark now, the only light thrown by an oil lamp Fingon must have lit upon the cluttered bedside table. As she watched, disoriented, she saw him lean forward and in a moment the light flare slightly brighter, but still nowhere near enough to reach her in the corner. All things were rationed in Mithrim these days: oil, medicine, bullets, ink. Supply trips to Hithlum were now weeks overdue, but there was a need for caution, since the attack at Christmas.

In the warm yellow glow of the lamp, Russandol’s expression was more easily discerned than Fingon’s, who sat with his back half to her. He was sitting up again, and his eyes were fixed upon his cousin, dilated very dark in the dim light.

“God, no,” Fingon replied to his question, sounding distressed. “No, there is nothing wrong with you. That is—there is nothing wrong that we may not mend together, you and I. Maedhros—forgive me. I know I have been distracted of late, and I have not been fair to you. If I find it hard, at times, to be both your physician and your friend, I know this to be entirely my failing, and no fault of your own. And if I have made you suffer for it, then I—I must beg your pardon again, and vow to do better. You have been a model patient. You have been far more patient with _me_ , indeed, than I deserve.”

“Fingon,” said Maedhros again, still quieter. The light upon his face flickered.

“Maitimo,” Fingon said, at almost the same instant, then stopped, shaking his dark head. “—No. I am sorry. Maedhros. Maedhros, I have something to show you, here. Something you must see.”

A rustle of papers, hidden in his hands. Russandol sat very still, his gaze flicking down and then flashing back up, to Fingon’s face.

“More exercises, _cano_?” He asked, again with that forced brightness. The light humor of his tone did not translate to his expression, which remained very guarded. 

“No,” Fingon said, holding out a little dark book. It was a familiar sight, Estrela realized: the same pocketbook she had noticed him increasingly busy with, of late, scribbling in it during hasty mealtimes and during bedside vigils. He held it open to a certain page, and laid it upon the coverlets.

Russandol did not touch it. His gaze lingered for a breath upon Fingon’s face—for two breaths—and then his eyes lowered, and he looked at whatever was shown there, upon the paper. 

Nothing changed in his expression, but the darkness in the room was made suddenly a wide-open pit, oppressive in its emptiness, and Fingon began speaking hastily, as though his words could fill it up.

“This is a device,” Fingon said, all in a single breath, “for your damaged leg. I have already shown the schematics to Curufin, and he believes he can craft what I need precisely. I have complete faith in his abilities; he shall produce for us a contraption at least as good as anything I might have had in a hospital back East—indeed, it is likely to be much better. You know your brother’s skill.”

Russandol said nothing.

“First, we shall need to rebreak the bone, at the place where it is crooked. This need not cause you pain, Maedhros, I promise; I have saved enough of my medicines to ensure you can be insensible, during the surgery. Once rebroken, I can fit the pieces back together properly, so that they can mend the way that Bauglir denied them, when he fitted the brace you described to me before. The brace Curufin shall make will hold the limb properly, this time, while you recover. There will be additional therapy needed, of course, and more weeks abed. But afterwards, you really shall be healed. You shall be able to walk again, and to run. You may, with time, move without even a limp, or any pain at all. It will be—It will be difficult in the early days, of course; I do not wish to deceive you as to that. But you have come this far, already.”

Still, Russandol said nothing. Fingon, for the first time, bent his head to look down at the open book with him, reaching with one hand to nervously trace the page. 

“The pins are necessary for holding the bone in place, until it has knit together again. It may take another three months, perhaps, of rest, before we can perform the secondary surgery to remove the pins and the brace entire. Once you have healed after that, we may begin to exercise the leg to return mobility and strength to the muscles, which shall have atrophied further from the prolonged bedrest, of course. But that shall be easy enough to do; the hard parts shall be over, by then.”

It was terrible, to be overhearing such things, eavesdropping against her will to a private conversation of such a nature. Estrela had thought to signal, at first, that she was awake; now she did not dare to. She shut her eye again, wishing she could not hear the gentle, anxious doctor’s voice over the pounding of blood in her ears. 

Finally, very soft, she heard Russandol speak. Heard him make that same choked, stifled laugh she had grown to cherish in the slave camp, but it was a sound made horrible by what he had just heard—by what she was imagining drawn out in that black notebook, by a cousin’s tender hand.

“The hard parts shall be over, then,” Russandol repeated, muttering low. “God— _God_.”

“I do not mean to be facetious,” Fingon said, distress tightening his voice again. “I only wish to offer you—well, _hope_ , Maedhros. I participated in numerous bonesettings during my student days, so I assure you I know what I am doing. You may choose whom you would like to assist in the surgery, and we have proven already we can keep this room sterile and safe for you as you recover, so there is no great danger, I promise. And with Curufin’s help—“

“I may choose that, may I?” Russandol interrupted, his voice still odd and quiet. “You shall need—assistants?”

“I shall need men strong enough to help in pulling the bone apart, that I may realign it,” said Fingon, apologetically. “If it were an arm, the problem would not be so difficult, but the muscles of the thigh are very strong, and you have had time enough for the tissue to contract and distort. That has been part of the difficulty of your walking, you see. Your run to the lake only exacerbated the issue; we must not delay the treatment further.”

“Oh,” said Russandol, his voice very brittle indeed now, and raising in volume: “if it were an arm it would be easier. Of course, _cano_. How foolish of me to forget.”

Where the darkness had been a void, the silence was a smothering smoke, bitter enough to choke on. It was absolutely still, in the little room. When Fingon spoke again, he strove still towards gentle encouragement, but his voice was ragged. 

“Maedhros. Please. If you don’t—I am sorry, Maedhros, you must know how desperately sorry I am. And I cannot begin to express how—very much I wish I wasn’t so, but if we don’t do this now, you shall go lame all your life.”

“A terrible thing,” Russandol remarked, harsh and bright, “to be a cripple.”

“Maitimo, stop this!” There came the sound of a chair flung back, of Fingon leaping to his feet. “This is not about—this cannot be about what was done, it is about what we can still do, to save you future grief. I know you cannot want to remain lame, unable to walk unaided.”

“I have Celegorm to carry me.”

“Maedhros! Be serious.”

“I am!” His voice rose; this was an anger Estrela had not heard before, and she thought Fingon had not heard it either, for his intake of breath was sharp enough to be heard even as Russandol went on: 

“I cannot want to be a cripple? Strange, that you should care so much about that now, when you did not then.”

“Maedhros, the choice then was your hand or your death, you know that—“

“So there _was_ a choice! One which you made for me, and now you make it again. You want me to agree with you, to clear your conscience, but you do not truly care what my opinion is, do you? Fingon, if I tell you no, you will only drug me, and tie me down, and do what _you_ will regardless of _my_ will.”

“Never. I would _never_ —“

“Do not lie to me,” Maedhros spat, his voice breaking a little. “Fingon would never—fucking _lie_ , to me.”

“I am telling you the truth, Maitimo, God help me, what else am I to do? You know you have scarcely been able to move the leg since the lake, without pain. It’s not going to get better, M-Maedhros. Unless we mend it properly, it will only get worse, and I don’t—I know you don’t want that. If we can make your leg whole and strong again we must—we must do it. Whatever it takes. It is for your own good.”

“It is for your own good,” Russandol mimicked, and Estrela felt the air turn to stone in her lungs, for she knew _that_ voice, and knew it was not Fingon’s, at all. 

“ _It is for your own good. This pain, you bring upon yourself. You are strong enough, for this._ ”

There were tears in his voice by the end of the tirade, and he paused, breathing hard. Fingon was silent, stunned. 

“Very good, Fingon. That is exactly like what Bauglir used to tell me, and Mairon in his smithy. They too delighted in healing only to hurt again, and again, and _again, god!_ They said it was my choice then, too, the torture and the lessons and the shame, the—the—“

His voice died a violent, sobbing death. Returned, it was cold, and strong again: “Shall I tell you more of what they used to say or shall _you_ tell _me_?”

“Maitimo!” Fingon cried, stricken. Russandol did not flinch. 

“ _Maitimo!_ That’s right. What else?”

“You are being cruel,” said Fingon, and he sounded so wretched Estrela could not bear to let him be alone any longer. She roused herself, stirring as though only just waking, and opened again her single, watering eye. 

Fingon spun about to stare at her wildly, as though he had forgotten she was there. 

Russandol’s face, beyond his, was livid in the low light, his eyes hollow and bright with flame. 

“Estrela!” Fingon exclaimed, his agitation still plain: he wrung his hands distractedly, the way Russandol used to before, and the sight of it smote her heart. “I am sorry, I had thought to—to let you sleep. We must have raised our voices.”

“Here, Estrela,” Russandol said in turn, shoving the little book towards her with his single hand, “have a fancy at this, won’t you? Now that you’re here. A second opinion.”

“Maedhros!” Fingon said aghast, reaching to wrest the book from his cousin. When Russandol did not give it up, he fell back, at a loss. 

“Maedhros, this was to be a private matter,” he muttered, glancing back at Estrela. 

“Whatever for? _For my own good,_ you said; nothing shameful about it, nothing _wrong._ Estrela, take a look at what the good doctor has drawn up, here, and tell me what you think.”

“If Doctor Fingon does not wish me to see, then I would rather not,” Estrela said, her own chest very tight now; her own hands clenching against the edge of the bench. 

“Good God, why does everyone care so much about what it is Doctor Fingon wishes?” Russandol exclaimed, in a manner that would almost have been joking, if it was not so harsh. Fingon set his jaw, and reached for the book again. This time, Russandol did not resist him pulling it away.

“Enough, Maedhros,” said Fingon. “Punish me, if you must, but leave your friends out of this. You will regret it, if you don’t.”

“Oh! You know me so well,” said Russandol, viciously, and then he pressed the heel of his hand to his brow, as though pressing back a headache, and shut his eyes. 

“Estrela, if you could give us a moment, please,” the little doctor said, after a pause, strained but still very polite. He turned away from Russandol as though the action hurt him, and offered her his hand with a miserable attempt at a smile. “If you could be so kind as to bring up some—tea, some mint tea, from the kitchen? We could all use something to settle our nerves, I think. Maybe a little food, if there is any prepared. Here, let me walk you to the door.”

She allowed him to help her to her feet. She tried not to look at Russandol, huddled in the bed, in the amber-soft glow of the lamp. In the stifling, lonesome dark. 

Fingon hesitated, at the open doorway, but she did not know what to say to him, and so he only took a deep breath and nodded to her. The lamplight scarcely framed him at all; to her single eye he looked almost a portrait of himself, with his blue eyes great and dark in his pale face, and the book clutched to his breast, and the flat brown void behind him. 

“Thank you,” he murmured, and squared his shoulders, and resolutely shut the door.


	4. The Foundering

In a small corner room in Mithrim, an oil lamp flickered. The oil lamp was set upon a little bedside table, the surface of which was haphazard with all the various paraphernalia of healing: a few stoppered bottles, a roll of threadbare bandages many times reboiled, a tin cup half-filled with water, and a Bible half-hidden by the clutter of medicines strewn across its leather binding. There were no scissors lain there, for cutting the bandages; nor were there any bloodletting knives. These, the young doctor kept upon his own person. A sprig of flowering buckwheat lay shriveled and dry upon the floor, where it had fallen unnoticed from the tabletop: this had been a gift from a child who was once a slave.

Beside the fallen flower there was set a basin and ewer, kept beneath the table to be out of the way, and also a doctor’s medical kit. This looked like nothing so much as a miniature chest of drawers, made to be carried about and latched closed with a brass hook, much worn. There was a strap of black leather at the top of the chest, by which it could be carried one-handed, and a black shoulderstrap also, but this had fallen to pieces. The wood was weather-worn and warped, with small divots here and there cut away, all signs of a long and terrible road. There was a place for a paper nameplate to be inserted, behind a miniature brass frame, but if a name had ever been there it had long since fallen away.

Inside the chest, the young doctor kept his medicines in little bottles and vials, all lined up in as precious an order as a child might line its wooden soldiers. Most of these were, by now, empty. Here there were other tools of healing as well, these more fearsome: syringes and needles, pliers for teeth, razor blades wrapped in cotton scraps spotted with rust despite all the doctor’s efforts at cleanliness. 

And beneath those blades, buried in the deepest drawer: 

A small, surgical handsaw. A forceps. An anesthetic mouth gag. A collection of scalpels, clean and waiting.

The young doctor thought of those scalpels, as he stood facing his patient, in the silent, oil-lit room. He thought of blades which needed sharpening, and sought to put all hurt, all anger from his heart. 

“Maitimo,” said the doctor, in a voice which was always, in such extremities, too much a cousin’s voice. 

“Maitimo, please look at me.”

Maedhros lifted his head. Across the room, with his back to the door, Fingon’s face was in shadow, the dim light touching the ribbon in his hair, and the whites of his eyes, and nothing else. The same light settled in the copper of Maedhros’ own hair, and in the place at his temples where some scattered strands had begun to grow in as white as mountain-snow. It drew out the shadows where his bones starved sharpest: in his face, in his clavicle, in the fragile, beautiful shape of his trembling left hand. 

Fingon took one step closer, stopped, and took another breath. 

“Let us begin again,” he said. “Now that we—have a moment to ourselves.”

Maedhros glanced about the room, and fixed upon the empty bench in the corner where Celegorm was wont to sprawl. Where Estrela had been sat listening to them quarrel, for God knew how long, before Fingon had the presence of mind and the shame enough to send her away. 

Maedhros whispered, hoarsely: “Belle?”

“Estrela has gone to fetch you some tea,” Fingon answered, and stepped forward again, to stand behind the chair he had so recently vacated. He reached out to grip the wooden chairback, not trusting himself yet to resume his seat. Maedhros did not flinch from the movement, but it was difficult, somehow, to know if that was an encouraging sign or not. 

“Of course,” Maedhros said, shutting his eyes again in a long blink, as if to shake away a clinging nightmare. “She said . . . She wanted to bring the children to visit, tonight.”

“The children shall have to wait,” Fingon replied firmly, and forced himself to offer a reassuring smile, tucking his notebook back in his trouser pocket. 

“We need not look at my poor drawings any longer, Maedhros. I know you understand them well enough. But I need you to show me you understand the necessity of the operation, too. I know you think it a cruel choice, but try to consider that it is a choice for healing, not—not merely more pain. It will be far crueler to suffer the damage that was done to your leg, for the rest of your life. If we can spare you that—well! Can’t you see that we must! A convalescence of a few months, why, that is nothing compared to a lifetime of suffering. Everyone here says I saved you,” Fingon added in a rush, bitterly, swiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. “You and I know that isn’t—isn’t fully true. And so I must keep trying. I must keep trying to help you, until you really are safe again. Please, tell me you understand that, at least.”

Maedhros’ hand had been twisting fretfully upon the coverlet. Now, it went utterly still, fingers splayed. 

“You sound like him,” remarked Maedhros, watching Fingon intently. “He had that knack too, of making everything sound so—so damnedly simple.”

Fingon gripped the chairback like a vise, the grain of the wood cutting into his fingertips. 

“I do not who you keep mistaking me for, whether Bauglir or some other villain,” he retorted, struggling to keep his voice even: “but I am not him, Maitimo. And if you are—if this is only a trick, and you are only naming me such to try to incense me, it shall not work.”

“You know me so well,” Maedhros repeated unkindly, as he had said only moments before, when Estrela had still been in the room. 

Estrela would be returning, once the tea was steeped. Fingon wished he had thought of a more lengthy errand, to buy himself more time, but he was now so agitated himself it was perhaps a small miracle he had contrived to think of anything at all. He reapplied his smile, and tried not to feel how ghoulish it must look, pasted on and paper-thin. 

“Of course I know you,” he said. “Didn't I spend all my boyhood growing up with you? So much has happened since, but—but God, Maitimo, doesn’t that still mean something? Is that not still a foundation, for you and I? That once, we knew everything there was to know of each other’s souls? You used to trust me. I have not—I do not think I have betrayed that trust, since. I do not understand why you cannot bear to trust me one—one last time.”

Maedhros watched him, unblinking. He raised one brow archly, in horrible imitation of his old way, when they were only schoolboys and moneyed fools. 

“The arrogance you have,” Maedhros whispered, in a voice terribly like Celegorm’s, “to presume you ever knew everything about me.”

That, Fingon felt like a slap to the face. He had never—except only once, and that had been in stupid defense of his cousin’s already sullied honor—been much of a duelist. Firstly, because as a boy he had been so anxious about what such a violent affair meant for the health of the soul, especially if one were to perish as the result of such a fight. Secondly, because his father recognized in him the brash impetuousness of a fighter, and thus sought as he grew to dissuade him from confrontation in any way he could then devise. His vocation for medicine, once discovered, had quite put paid to any earlier predilection towards conflict. 

Still, Fingon recognized a thrown gauntlet when he saw one. Particularly when it was thrown by one of Feanor’s sons. Even more particularly when that Feanorian was the one person whom he had once worshipped like one of God’s own saints. 

“Whatever I knew,” Fingon answered with rising heat, refusing to shrink from Maedhros’ stare, “I knew because you shared it with me, as a friend. You used to confide in me once, Maedhros. For God’s sake, confide in me now. Whatever has you in such foul temper—only tell me, that I might help you. Is it that you are afraid? Of—of the surgery, or—of me?”

Maedhros laughed. It was the first full laugh Fingon had heard from him, since their reunion. The sound of it set his skin crawling. 

“Afraid of you! Whatever for? What is the worst you could do to me? Tie me down hand and foot—gag me—break my bones—cut me open? All that, and still leave me living to endure beyond enduring? There is nothing you can do to me now, that I have not endured already. Do not flatter yourself, cousin.”

Fingon felt sick. He felt his blood beating hot in his ears, and swallowed back tears that were at least half anger, all mingled with the grief. 

“Stop talking nonsense,” he said, very low. Maedhros’ teeth gleamed. 

“Ah! That was one sin they never succeeded in beating out of me. They put a blade in my mouth once, gagged me with it so I couldn’t so much as beg, and still I didn’t learn. Fucking blarney.” 

His fingers curled. 

“If I beg you now,” he said, almost droll: “will you let me—let me go?”

“You are not my prisoner.” Fingon swallowed again, and shut his eyes a moment to steady himself. “And this surgery is—you must have it done, Maedhros. Sooner or later, if we are to save the leg, and sooner is best, both to reduce the discomfort it shall cause you, and to hasten the recovery. I am sorry it is so, I have told you again and again, but—“

“But oh! you know what is best. As you knew in our boyhood days, as you knew each time you pestered me with all your damn attempts at doctoring, all your botched cooking, all your stupid, fool diagnoses—“

Something inside Fingon broke. 

“Yes,” he cried, shoving the chair aside so violently it nearly tipped over. “Yes, as I knew you then! As I knew you wanted all my foolish fretting, in those days; that you wanted all my pity, and my attention, and all my damned doctoring. As I knew you were so desperate to be free of the City, to be back on your precious farm. As I knew you wanted to be free from your—your wretched father!” He was breathless, gasping as if he were fighting something physical, trading blows instead of words. Maedhros sat rigid, ribs heaving, staring at him. “As I knew you dreaded his visits even as you loved him to distraction, and that all your love brought you nothing but misery, even before you murdered our kinsmen and left us penniless in the wreckage you left behind. Would you like me to go on, or are you back to your senses again?”

“My father used to make a game of putting needles beneath my fingernails,” Maedhros said, fine and lilting, breathing very fast. “I was all of five years old. Did you know that?”

“I didn’t have to,” Fingon spat, sick and stunned and furious. At his uncle—at his cousin—at himself! What difference did it make, anymore, if they were all this ruined in the end anyway? If there was no way to fix what had been broken?

“I didn’t have to know he was cruel to you to know you were cruel to yourself for him.”

“Oh, Fingon,” Maedhros said, laughing again, but this laugh closer to tears: “you have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Esther Landau,” Fingon said. The name sounded so strange, falling from his lips into the sudden silence. He had not spoken it before, he realized, in an odd, removed sort of way. He had only ever heard others say it. Finrod, with all the admiring fondness he had always used when naming his forward-thinking, intellectual friends, and—

Maedhros, with the expensive wine bottle loose and swinging from his sun browned hand, laughter in his eyes as they sat together on the grand old porch at Formenos during Grandfather Finwe’s ceili. As Maedhros put his lips conspiratorially close to Fingon’s ear, and confessed with a shy thrill of excitement that he had finally fallen in love. 

Maedhros was very white in the dark, his eyes round as silver dollars. 

“The devil do you mean,” he said, roughly. In any other time, such a tone of voice—such a look upon his face—would have been a warning. 

“You told me you were going to marry her,” Fingon said, mercilessly. Maedhros never formally introduced him to the object of his affections; he had promised to, that happy evening, but nothing had come of that promise. That too could have been a warning, in its way. At the time, Fingon had been young enough, and generous enough, to think of the collapse of his cousin’s suit as a sort of natural catastrophe, of the same class as an earthquake, or a flood. He had seen only victims then, and had not thought to trace blame. 

Oh, what a child he had been. 

“I know you wanted her, and that it must have been your father’s fault again that you did not wed her. God, Maedhros, how many ways did you let him hurt you?”

“Stop.” The scar across Maedhros’ face contorted. “That was nothing. A dalliance. I lost interest quickly, as I always did. You put too much stock in drunken sentiment—Christ, I had forgotten how you always took things so seriously.”

Before Fingon could muster any kind of coherent riposte to that blow, Maedhros was adding, with frightful flippancy: “You really were such a child, weren’t you? You had no idea, just how many women I had.”

The gall was that it was true. Fingolfin had known, as it turned out; had worried that Fingon might himself turn a rake, under his charming eldest cousin’s influence. Finrod had suspected, as had Maglor. 

Fingon, daft with affection and admiration both, had fought a boy in the street for daring to claim that Maedhros had compromised his sister’s virtue. 

More vividly than the thrashing, now, Fingon remembered: Maedhros knew then what accusation Fingon was defending him against, and Maedhros had let him. 

Fingon clenched his fists. 

“As to that,” he snapped, “Haven’t you wondered, how we managed to track you so far? How we followed your wagons west? It was easy; at every town, all I had to do was seek out the taverns, and the saloons, and the—the houses of ill repute, in all their guises. I had only to find women I could ask, in those places. All I had to tell them was that I was searching for a man about my age, very tall, with red hair. Did you never think of that? Of how sordid the map was that you left for me? They all knew you—not by name, but they—“

He paused, trembling. Suddenly, like a wave of nausea, he could not bear to look at his cousin. 

“Only, as it happened, some of those women were spies in Bauglir’s pay. Did you know that, when you—when you slept with them? They sold information to his men, and that’s how we were waylaid. That is how Argon died. Your women told Bauglir’s men where we were, and those men riled up a posse to lie in wait for us on the road out of town; said it was justice for someone you killed. Vengeance against two tall men, one red and one gold, and a big wolf dog at their heels! I knew it must be you and Celegorm. And then they shot my brother in the chest.”

His throat hurt. Shuddering, Fingon realized he could not remember when he had begun shouting. 

When he forced himself to look at Maedhros again, his cousin was shuddering too, his arms raised to hide his face, curled against his one good knee. 

Fingon buried his own face in his hands, and struggled not to give into tears of his own. That was not what was needed, now. 

_God_ , he cried, silently, and did not know if it was a prayer. 

The knock at the door, when it came, was very quiet. Fingon scrubbed at his eyes with his shirtsleeves, and tried in vain to will his face to even, calm complexion. When he pulled the door open, he was still hot to the ears.

Estrela stood in the hall, a tray balanced in her arms. She had brought the little pot of tea, and bread, and some dried apples which she must have fetched from the pantry, which Fingon knew to be very tart and sweet.

Fingon took the tray. She let him, but she could not quite meet his eyes. 

“I am sorry,” he told her, still only grasping towards calm despite all his efforts. “Were you waiting long?”

“I knocked once before,” she said, “but I think you—could not hear. I could not manage the door myself, with the tray. I am sorry.”

“Ah.” He hesitated. “How much did you hear?”

“Only a little,” she answered quickly, but even as she spoke she colored an even deeper red, and looked down at her feet. 

“Let me in to strain the pot, at least, before I take the tray down again,” she mumbled, her words even more tangled in her scarred mouth than was usual, and she stepped past him, helping to right the chair and set the tray down there, arranging the cups and straining the mint leaves. The sharp, wintry scent was almost unbearably sweet, in the stale sickroom. 

“Estrela,” Maedhros whispered, as she straightened up with the tray, his own voice as hoarse as if he had been the one screaming. Perhaps he had been. Fingon could not—could not recall clearly, now. 

She raised her head and looked at him, lifting her chin. Her single eye was very bright. 

“You should go, Estrela,” Fingon interjected, feeling his shame like a fever, hot and shivering. “Come back—tomorrow, perhaps. Go rest, now.”

“You need not go,” Maedhros said, instantly. He had looked up, sometime while Fingon had his attention upon Estrela; his arms were wrapped now around his ribs, as though they hurt him. Something dark trickled from his mouth and spattered on the coverlet. Blood, from a bitten tongue. He did not seem to notice. 

“No,” Estrela told him—not unkindly, but with a firmness that brooked no argument. “No, I think I must.”

Once more, Fingon escorted her to the door. It seemed an age since they had walked together last, though it could not have been more than half an hour ago. Irrationally, he found that he was afraid of her leaving. Of being left alone again, with Maedhros. 

“I know I may trust your discretion, Estrela,” Fingon whispered as he followed her into the hall, shamefaced and miserable. “But please, do not repeat anything you—may have heard, tonight.”

“Of course.” She hesitated, then reached out and took his hand in hers, pressing it slightly.

The hand which could not save Argon. 

The hand which took Maedhros’, at the cliff. 

“Look after him,” she said, gently, and then she was gone.


End file.
